A national crisis of faith

India finds its three guiding principles of socialism, secularism and nationalism resoundingly hollow. The fall of three governments in a y...

India finds its three guiding principles of socialism, secularism and nationalism resoundingly hollow. The fall of three governments in a year and a half does not indicate merely the failing competence of political leadership, it also reveals a deeper crisis of faith. It is obvious that the much-mouthed dogmas of "secularism" and "social justice" or "cultural nationalism" are now veneers for horse-trading. Today’s regional and caste chieftains prefer fawning loyalists to open thinkers. In the fiftieth year of Independence, the story of this loss of faith needs to be recapitulated.The fifties were a decade of hope. The optimism was symbolised by Chacha Nehru spending November 14 with schoolchildren and the exhibitions that brought nations big and small to our new republic. In the sixties, schools and colleges expanded, the “temples of modern India” generated employment. Faith in nationalism and social amelioration was still a palpable reality.The first half of the seventies witnessed another triumph of nationalism when it played midwife to the birth of Bangladesh. But the turning point in our history ushered itself in rather imperceptibly. In the latter half of the seventies, the darker days set in with the beginning of support to terrorism. Internally, regional factionalism was promoted by a propaganda that had its masterminds in the bastions of Western anthropology.

Flush with success, Indira Gandhi made the pendulum of governance swing from dictatorial socialism to regional manipulation, eroding democracy. This period was also beset with a grand illusion shared by all at the left of centre. It was thought that socialism can be poured from the top and so changes at the grassroots need not be attempted. The consequences were disastrous, for a class of corrupt politicians was created that acquired control over national wealth to perpetuate a permit raj. It killed enterprise while nothing from the State percolated to the poor. Then, in the name of secularism, religious regressiveness was promoted not only among minorities but more so among the Hindu majority. Under the policy of nurturing parochial minions for manipulations at the Centre, regional outfits were promoted to the extent that they went out of hand. By the end of the decade, both the socialist state and nationalism were discredited.

No wonder the eighties were a decade of terrorist wars, caste polarisation and the final withering of socialism that revealed the monumental corruption operating beneath it. Now that the fracas over the Jain Commission report has revealed the Congress-LTTE links, political parties do not wish to debate either the report or the issue of LTTE terrorism in Parliament. But the facts will refuse to remain hidden, no matter how embarrassing they may be to national or regional pride. It is already clear that instead of providing diplomatic, political and moral support to Sri Lankan Tamils, sections of the Indian authorities and the people chose to fuel militancy, a strategy which saw the nation itself falling victim at the hands of others.

While proxy wars and terrorism diverted India from performing its international role of leading the coloured and the colonised nations, internal struggles along caste lines weakened its capacity for absorbing technology and ushering in modernity while retaining its heritage. The rise of the middle castes, which had acquired enough economic muscle to translate their cultural identity into political clout, was turned into a misadventure by ideologues like V.P. Singh, working, consciously or unconsciously, under the influence of Western notions of ethnicity. The results were counterproductive and regressive. Like all upwardly-mobile castes in the history of India, the OBCs reinforced values upheld by the upper caste elite a generation ago — the economics of a decrepit socialism and the non-democratic hierarchy of the varna-jati system. Social justice became another name for social stagnation. Reiteration of caste identities not only subverted Indian nationalism, it also made international dialogue impossible at the grassroots level.

Now, at the end of the nineties, there is a continuation of proxy wars, greater erosion of national unity, entrenched casteism and the battle between the diehards of the communal economy and the uninformed votaries of liberalisation. While in the West liberalisation, in spite of the evils of rapid transition, is seen as an obvious option after the fall of the socialist polity, in India, the socialist juggernaut has too many high priests and acolytes who will not let the yatra be called off. They have promptly substituted the doctrine of class struggle with that of caste struggle and pinned their hopes on affirmative action for social justice to keep their juggernaut rolling. So far, social justice has only promoted a rabri layer’ (cream of the caste) that has virtually stalled the liberalisation of the economy and of thought. Not only the leftists, but even the rightists are not in favour of democratic privatisation, which would end the permit raj and may impel middle-level businessmen to find new loyalties.

No political party today dares to declare the end of permit raj socialism. Even Harvard products like Chidambaram talk Internet but practise inspector net by including in tax scrutiny minor essential amenities like a private telephone or an old car. As for regional, religious or caste identities, there is no party that will not pamper them. The BJP finds in the DMK an attractive partner, forgetting its decades of anti-Hindi-Sanskrit venom. To pamper Sikh obscurantists it can exempt helmets for Sikh women riding two-wheelers, to protect its trader-tenants it can reverse the new rent Bill. It has adopted the tactics (which it called “pseudo secularism”) of garnering support that were perfected by the Congress, equally mindless of the fragmentation these tactics generated. It even tried to entice the upper-caste Congress MPs to form a government consisting of the same brahmin-bania-OBC-minority (sans Muslims) combine with which the Congress made its salad-bowl. The bowl may have been toppled for some time by Mandalism, but the vessel of permit raj and the vegetables of ethnic plurality’ remains, though rearranged by a new hand. On the other side, by splitting the UF, the Congress is retrying its old hand. Though there is a growing recognition that this only forbodes meaningless alignments, no immediate solution seems in sight. If there is a solution, it is in starting to think anew.

The writer is a professor at Delhi University